I think that doing different family activity nights may be your best bet. Last year our 5th graders wanted to raise their own funds for their big field trip, so they put together a spaghetti dinner night. Everyone worked together; teachers, students and parents. They has a great turn out and was able to raise $2000. I feel parents enjoy doing these kinds of activities because it gives them a night out with the family.
I think they charged $3 for adults and I'm not sure for kids. Maybe you could do $3 per person or $10 for a family of 4 or 5.
I know it is hard for all of us to be thinking about fundraiser in light of everything that is going on but we need to keep the wheel turning. Maybe a catalog fundraiser seems like not a good thing to do but there are lots of creative ways raise funds. Maybe do different activity nights as funds are needed. Be specific about the $$ needs and weigh out what's necessity.

How about selling candy bars for $1.00 contact a candy-bar company. I know that $1.00 isn't asking a great deal but at least of each child sold a couple of boxes you should be okay. Sorry, it seems that the terrorist attacks struck even fundraiser efforts. I hope that things work out. Maybe a read-a-thon would be great.

If you do another fund raiser see if you can get the principal to do something wacky if you reach your goal. Our principal has promised to temporarily dye her hair blue if the students reach their goal. The kids are going crazy over this. Any added incentive helps.

Maggie, One of the truest lessons I feel I can bestow on my own children is "Learn to live within your means". Now if that means sacrifice and going without for a time, we just need to grin and bare it.

This could be a time to display just that thought. I would let the membership know the situation, and remind everyone of the expenditures in the budget. What options do you have before you? Another fundraiser, cutting that budget or give them the option to make a monetary donation. Let them vote on what they would like to do.

Money has always been very tight in our household and there have been many fundraisers that I wanted to support. To get more bang for my little buck, I bypass the fundraiser and take the money I would have spent on gift wrap and donate it. They get the whole amount instead of 50%. I know that we may face the same thing at our school this year. We will not hesitate to let the membership know where we are at, why and give them the option to decide what to do.

Here is another one that was suggested by a parent at our school, a Spell-A-Thon. Kids get sponsorship for each word they spell right. Lists are done to that grade level. She was telling us at another school he brother made the error of pledging $1 per word! Her daughter spelled 50 correct so her brother was a little sticker-shock when she asked for her $50! Don't know totals but she said it was fun.

We tried something a little different this year at our school - rather than a "sale" of sorts, we sponsored a "walk-a-thon." Our kids got donations from family, neighbors to walk laps outside the school during class time. We also had a committee that was responsible for contacting local businesses for corporate sponsorship, which paid for prizes for the kids/staff.

The kids had a great time (while they walked parent volunteers squirted them with water bottles, blew bubbles, etc.) and it was very well received by our staff and community! Kids could get just a couple of dollars from several people and it really added up quickly.

We have apx. 500 students at our school and generally hold several different fundraisers during the year to meet our budget of $11,500. We made well above the amount we ever expected....$18,000!!

This was such a fun event people seemed to forget that it was a fundraiser! We did our best to promote fitness and also invited parents to come to school and walk with the children. For a school with very little parent involvement, we were truely amazed at the number of parents, grandparents who showed up with their cameras to walk!!